A year ago Barnes & Noble closed the book on its Nook line of tablets, opting to lend the brand out to other manufacturers instead. Now we're seeing the first Android device to capitalize on this idea. Take a guess as to which company decided, sure, I'll make a Nook tablet. That's right, none other than Samsung. When you're already flooding the market with umpteen different tablet variants, what's one more? Dear reader, I present to you the Galaxy Tab 4 Nook.

Barnes & Noble may be bailing out of the tablet race, but that doesn't mean they're giving up on distributing digital content. Today the bookseller that also happens to sell movies, school supplies, electronics, and accessories is similarly expanding its media streaming portfolio. The company is hoping to grow its audience with the release of Nook Video into the Play Store.

The Nook Video app is free to download, and customers are able to rent and purchase movies and TV shows without a subscription.

Dear Barnes & Noble: bless you, ladies and gentlemen, for making the Nook Color. Without it, the Android modding scene might be less vibrant than it is now. On that note, the Nook Simple Touch with GlowLight (a Kindle-style e-ink reader, also running Android) has received another price drop. Now you can pick one up for a cool $99 - not bad for a device that launched at the already-low price of $139.

If you're looking for a cheap, mod-worthy tablet with a great screen, look no further. Today eBay Daily Deals has the Nook HD+, with a 9-inch, 1920x1280 screen and built-in access to the Google Play Store for just $119.99. It's a refurbished model, but that's $30 and 20% cheaper than the already-low $150 retail price. The eBay listing has free standard shipping, plus you won't have to pay sales tax outside of New Jersey and New York.

The folks on the CyanogenMod team are always adding new devices to their ever-increasing list, and over the last few days they've added no less than eleven more. According to a pair of Google+posts, there are new officially-supported phones and tablets including two Barnes & Noble Nooks, a ton of Motorola devices, and a few Samsungs thrown in for good measure. Here's the full list:

Barnes & Noble may be toning down its Android tablet business, but they'd still really appreciate it if you bought some books from them. To that end, they've updated the Nook Android app to version 3.4, with a focus on better magazine browsing and book images. Now Android tablets with a resolution of 1280x720 or higher (which should be pretty much everything made in the last year, barring some off-brand hardware) have access to bigger, sharper HD scans of magazines.

I've taken a less conventional path into the world of Android. I owned a Honeycomb tablet long before I finally got my hands on my first smartphone, and before that, my first Android device was a Nook Color (I booted CyanogenMod from a microSD card, so it was legit). It is due to this background that I am sad to see Barnes & Noble end in-house development of its Nook line of tablets.

Do you want to give a flashy gift on Father's Day? You know, something to really show up your siblings. Barnes & Noble has a pretty sweet offer that might just help to turn you into dad's favorite, again. Until Father's Day, the NOOK HD will be on sale for $129 (8GB) and $149 (16GB), while the NOOK HD+ will drop all the way to $149 (16GB) and $179 (32GB).

It's no secret that I've long been against calling the Nook and Kindle Fire series "Android tablets," as neither is more than a glorified e-reader to me. Today, Barnes & Noble dropped a bomb on that way of thinking, as it announced that the full array of Google Play services will now be available on the Nook HD and Nook HD+, essentially turning them into full-fledged tablets.

Moving forward, all Nook HD and HD+ tablets will ship with Google services – including the Play Store, YouTube, Gmail, Chrome, and the like – but for those who already own HD/HD+ units, the new features will be showing up via an OTA update to v2.1.0, which should begin rolling out today.